UPM student builds autonomous robot to collect loose oil palm fruit

PUTRAJAYA: A final-year student of the Bachelor of Agricultural and Biosystems Engineering programme at the Faculty of Engineering, Universiti Putra Malaysia (UPM), has developed an autonomous robot to address the problem of collecting loose oil palm fruit.

The robot detects and picks up loose oil palm fruitlets automatically, helping to improve the efficiency of plantation operations while reducing dependence on manual labour.

Ahmad Faris Ahmad Fuad said the innovation was developed to tackle a key challenge in the oil palm industry, where much of the work is still done manually and requires a large workforce.

"Collecting loose fruit manually requires workers to pick up every fruitlet that has fallen to the ground, making the job time-consuming and labour-intensive," he said in a statement.

He said that although motorised collection machines are already on the market, they still require an operator to run them.

"Through this research, I developed a computer vision system that allows the robot to detect loose fruit automatically.

"The robot platform was already available in the laboratory and I integrated the technology so that the robot can carry out collection tasks without relying entirely on humans," he said.

He said the oil palm sector was chosen as the focus of his research because the industry is among the important contributors to the national economy.

"I see the oil palm industry as having a big impact on Malaysia. As an Agricultural and Biosystems Engineering student, I want to develop technology that can help modernise this sector and benefit the industry in the future," he said.

He hoped more young people would view agriculture as a high-technology field offering major opportunities to produce innovations and contribute to the country's economy. (Quotes translated from Bahasa Melayu.)